Install Htop 2.0 – Linux Process Monitoring for RHEL, CentOS & Fedora

This article is the continuation of our Linux system monitoring series, today we’re talking about the most popular monitoring tool called htop, which is just reached to version 2.0.2 and comes with some cool new features.

Htop 2.0: Linux Process Monitoring

Htop is an interactive real time process monitoring application for Linux/Unix like systems and also a handy alternative to top command, which is default process monitoring tool that comes with pre-installed on all Linux operating systems.

Htop has numerous other user-friendly features, which are not available under top command and they are:

In htop you can scroll vertically to view the full process list, and scroll horizontally to view the full command lines.

It starts very quickly as compared top, because it doesn’t wait to fetch data during startup.

In htop you can kill more than one processes at once without inserting their PIDs.

In htop you no longer needed to enter process number or priority value to re-nice a process.

Press “e” to print the set of environment variables for a process.

Use mouse to select list items.

Install Htop Using Binary Packages in Linux

Important: Following binary installation, will give you the available htop version 1.0.3 or 1.0.2 in most distributions, so if you’re looking for Htop 2.0.2 version, then I recommend you to follow Source installation section as shown below:

To install Htop on RHEL 7/6/5 and CentOS 7/6/5, your system must have EPEL repository installed and enabled, to do so run the following commands on your respective distributions to install and enable it for your system architecture (32bit or 64bit).

Press F2 or S for setup menu > there are four columns i.e Setup, Left Column, Right Column and Available Meters.

Here, you can configure the meters printed at the top of the window, set various display options, select among color patterns and choose which columns are printed in which order.

Htop Setup Screen

Type tree or t to display processes tree view.

Htop Process View in Tree Format

You can refer function keys displayed at footer to use this nifty htop application to monitor Linux running processes. However, we advise to use character keys or shortcut keys instead of function keys as it may have mapped with some other functions during secure connection.

Htop Shortcut and Function Keys

Some of the shortcut and function keys and its functionality to interact with htop.

I am Ravi Saive, creator of TecMint. A Computer Geek and Linux Guru who loves to share tricks and tips on Internet. Most Of My Servers runs on Open Source Platform called Linux. Follow Me: Twitter, Facebook and Google+

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